Don Pesci: Blumenthal, Benghazi and the difference it makes

Published 5:05 pm, Thursday, May 8, 2014

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. gestures as he speaks during the committee's hearing on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) less

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. gestures as he speaks during the committee's hearing on the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, on Capitol Hill in ... more

Photo: AP

Don Pesci: Blumenthal, Benghazi and the difference it makes

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Dick Blumenthal, the nation’s first full time consumer protection senator, has now weighed in on merchants who “may be selling lower quality items produced specifically for outlet stores without properly informing consumers,” according to a Philadelphia television station.

The Senator has asked the Federal Trade Commission to examine claims that merchants have misled consumers in their ads. “There’s a lot of evidence,” Blumenthal breathlessly told the television consumer protection watchdog in Philadelphia, “that people shopping at outlet malls or at outlet establishments have no idea that goods and merchandise are made specifically for outlet malls.”

Naturally, preventive legislation is needed.

On foreign policy issues of national importance, Benghazi for instance, the senator has been less voluble. But that is because Mr. Blumenthal is not interested in regulating foreign affairs – just outlet malls. In fact, political consumers may be unaware that U.S. Congresspersons generally are uninterested in regulating foreign policy or budgets or administration officials who deprive Congress of the data the greatest deliberative body on earth needs to satisfy its Constitutional obligations or, of equal importance, its own ungovernable appetite for regulating everything that moves and breathes outside Congressional precincts. Mr. Blumenthal’s own Congressional site carries only a brief pro forma, seven line expression of “outrage and sadness” issued the day after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

And you thought you sent your senator to Washington to hold responsible high administration officials who failed to protect or come to the aid of an ambassador to Libya murdered by — dare it be said? — Islamic terrorists.

Silly you.

In High School, your civics text – if you had the advantage of a civics text – mentioned a division of powers as a check on presidential presumption. The Constitution, an ancient but never-the-less useful document dating from 1787, invests the President with war powers and assigns to Congress auxiliary powers that also shape foreign policy. Constitutionally, Congress is the voice of conscience perched on the shoulder of any president who has Napoleonic ambitions.

Chris Stevens, the ambassador murdered in Libya by Islamic terrorists, was the personal representative of the President of the United States, as are all ambassadors.

Following the murder of the personal representative of President Barack Obama and the brave military personnel who came to his aid — Sean Smith and two Navy Seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, all slaughtered by militant Al-Qaida connected terrorists — members of the administration fanned out to spread the lie that those who led the assault on the annex in Benghazi were “protestors” agitated by a film that had insulted, peace be upon him, the prophet Muhammad.

Persistent investigations by oversight Congressional committees and a cache of e-mails secured by Judicial Watch on a Freedom of Information demand has now shown that the Obama/Rice stage show was an elaborate pantomime designed to convey the message during a presidential campaign that Mr. Obama had dealt a death blow to Al-Qaida. As such, the deception was much more wicked – and deadly – than the ads that recently have excited the interest of Mr. Blumenthal.

Among the 41 documents pried loose from the Obama administration, is an e-mail from deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes that presents to then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice four goals that were to be accomplished during Ms. Rice’s numerous television appearances days after militant Islamic terrorists murdered the ambassador and other Americans in Benghazi.

According to the e-mail, Ms. Rice was to: “… convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy; To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests; To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”

Only the last goal had been accomplished – temporarily – in the weeks following the terrorist attack. The attack on the U.S. Consulate did not arise from a spontaneous protest; it was not rooted in an internet video; the successful assault did point to a broader policy failure; the United States was and remains irresolute in bringing to justice people who harm Americans, particularly if they are associated with the Obama administration; and Mr. Obama’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges – in Libya, Syria, Egypt, Iran and, most recently, Russia -- is very much in question.

Mr. Blumenthal, however, appears to be blithely unconcerned with the foreign policy mishaps of the Obama administration, preferring to focus his attention on misleading representations issued by Mall vendors. Unless he refocuses his attention pronto, history will hit him like a speeding passenger train. Mr. Blumenthal lately has devoted some of his attention to passenger trains.